Ringbound

fine, probably 2 hours long. The relic system has a nice level of depth to add some strategy that I respect. I'm not a huge fan of the session-based "incremental" games. Unless I'm wiping all of my progress for incremental upgrades, it's not really an incremental in my mind. Still, ok concept. ok execution.

It's entertaining and fun. Honestly, you should stock up on relics at the highest percentage of getting blue ones. It makes the rest of the game go way easier, but it's easy to beat if you're persistent. Easy to 100% in a couple of hours.

I'm totally in love with Ringbound! The visuals along with the music make it good time. The upgrades can take a while to get going, but once you get the ones you need things start popping off. I'm also in love with the themes. Green is my favorite but the pink one is so good too. Not sure I will ever be able to compete on hard, but excited to see how far I can get on easy.

really fun cute game for an evening

This one actually surprised me a little with how much I ultimately enjoyed it. I came into it with rather low expectations, and it was a pleasant surprise to see a very well executed RNG mechanic in an incremental game, which drastically uplifted gameplay that would have otherwise been very generously considered "mid" The gameplay is pretty simple, you control an arrow that is quite literally bound to a ring, and you have to prevent squares from ever reaching the edge of the ring. Controlling the arrow can feel a bit wonky at times, but becomes less of an issue over time as you get more powerful and the impact of missing some shots decreases. There is no skilltree to the game, with only 2 ways to get stronger, one being a basic on rails level up system that offers slow but steady progress, and the other being an RNG relic gacha that gives you random extra abilities or stats that you can equip. It is certainly risky to design such a large part of an incremental around an RNG mechanic like that, but it is executed surprisingly well, and gives this game the life and strategy that its sister incrementals lack. The way it works is that by paying a small(ish) price, you can get a random relic out of a pool of around 10 different relics. There is also a chance that you get a rare relic instead, which is just a single relic with 2 effects instead of just one. The amount of relics you can have equipped at once corresponds to the level of your relic upgrade. Additionally, as you level up your relic upgrade more and more, the price to buy new relics increases, but in return the chance of getting rare relics goes up. There is a pretty reasonable amount of variety between the different relic effects, and the effect of a relic is almost always more impactful than a level from the base level up system. Of course, not all relics are created equally, and there is a fairly wide difference in power between some of them, especially early on in the game. The relic effects do not scale linearly with the player, and some will get better or worse over time as your general level of power changes. This effect is to the game's benefit though, as it helps keep the strategizing fresh as you unlock more relic slots and find more rare relics. The game is short enough that you are very unlikely to run out of different relic builds to try before you beat the game, and I even played for a little while longer just to try a few more builds. Although it is still a significant ways away from being perfect, it is by far the best of the 3 games in the bundle, and is a very solid incremental in its own right, if still quite short. The price is very reasonable for what you are getting, and if you are looking for something to kill about an hour of your time, you probably can't go too wrong with this one.

Very fun little shooter! It's a shoot the cubes, gain $ to upgrade between runs so you can shoot more cubes scenario. It's almost an idler when you upgrade enough but the difficulty modes force you to chase missed cubes - which can be tricky around the ring. I love that this one actually has an end-game battle to beat. For more niche curation, follow me at: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/27440015-CSH-Picone/ Want more honest niche & indie reviews? Check out: https://www.cshpicone.com/gaming